Tuesday, 25 December 2012

It was talent galore at the “Start-Up City Event” organized by Silicon India. Budding businesses from different walks of technology were there to leave a lasting impact on investment stalwarts. The environment was swollen with energy and innovative ideas tincturing from every corner of the room.

There were panels of specialists on perhaps every critical business topic giving out useful lessons to the emerging entrepreneurs. The panelists took sessions on the challenges that start-ups usually face during their course of building a brand. Indian retail champs, including Yebhi.com and Jabong.com, mobile entrepreneurs, like LetsGoMo, and utility service providers, like CarzOnRent, were among the key panelists for the event.

MediaAgility was also there as an attendee. It was a great experience connecting with so many agile minds striving for making it big in the corporate scene. As one can expect from such a forgathering, there was an innocuous exchange of opinions throughout the hall. Some ideas were being validated, some were suggested upon, while some received mild shrugs.

Only some ideas managed to influence the attendees to perform critical analysis, to dig deeper into the concept and see it happening. And MediaAgility Edutainment was one of those unique ideas. MediaAgility Edutainment was unleashed with the aim of doling out useful yet entertaining IT-based consumer products for a varied range of platforms, including mobile, social and cloud, just to give you a perspective.

Of the handful critical comments that I received, I rate - “You’re trying to sell Healthy Junk Food” - as the most interesting and challenging one. The gentleman obviously meant that Education and Entertainment are two mutually exclusive and exhaustive concepts that can’t come together.

Hearing that, I drifted into pondering mode, for a few seconds though. But soon I asked a few questions to myself - “Are we trying to sell junk food in anyway?” “Is the entertainment quotient we’re intending to offer via our products is so pointless that it’s been equated to junk food?” “Are we offering another virtual farm or a social space that adds nothing to the user’s knowledge?”

And the answer to all these questions was a big “NO”. In fact, this sparked a new string of thoughts in my mind. I thought what makes junk food so appealing and sought after for people. And after thinking awhile, I realized that it ought to be ‘Taste’ and nothing else. Subsequently, I was convinced that MA Edutainment should be compared with “Tasty Health Food” and not with “Healthy Junk Food”.

Perceptibly, “Tasty Health Food” sounds more scalable and practicable than “Healthy Junk Food”. That doesn’t at all mean that I downplayed the sincerity of the concept, and admit that it can still be comfortably placed in that ‘critical bracket’. But a major part of that mountain has already been conquered, and it’s just a matter of a couple of weeks when you can actually feel the Edutainment touching your life.

Monday, 24 December 2012

“Tell me the last time you logged-out from Facebook?” No, there’s no typo in this question. I am indeed talking about “logging-out” and not “logging-in”. Seeing the world around, perhaps this makes much more sense. Your Twitter Followers or Facebook Friends have become the key determiners of your social skills. Be it interaction, or fun, or entertainment, or education, social media has become a source for your various cognitive needs.Taking this intense engagement with social media further, imagine meeting your earnest desire of traveling and seeing the world by simply logging into Facebook. Let’s play with that imagination a bit more. How about feeling the hustle-bustle of Spanish streets, or in the South-East Asia, or seeing the tranquil Norwegian landscapes, as if you’re touring these places in real? Not just that, what if I say that highly reliable guides will there at your service?Rout-e has given a real tangible shape to that imagination. It’s a Facebook Game engineered to connect you to the world while you’re playing it on your mobile sitting cozily in your living room. The app integrates map as the landing page which features routes clustered across different regions. Each route has been handpicked by MediaAgility Travel Consultants and subsequently corroborated with map routes, and Street View imagery. So, in addition to having a walk on the routes, you can see how a particular route looks like in real. What all fall in the way, what type of architecture is prominent there, what people wear, and other such knick-knackeries.Now, let’s talk about the guides who’ll be at your service to help you know more about the route you’re touring. Each route in Rout-e has several Points of Interests (POIs), with corresponding YouTube videos and Wiki articles attached to each POI. And if you like viewing images more, Rout-e brings Picasa images for those POIs, All in all, it’s a complete audiovisual guide who facilitates a fun-filled yet informative journey for you.Like us on: